


"To This Moment"/"I Found You" (Issue 1 | Chapter 1 | Page 1.1/2)

by acaelousqueadcentrum, czeegers



Series: Gail & Holly: Still Hearts Beat - Issue 1 [3]
Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: F/F, Gail & Holly: Still Hearts Beat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2379191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaelousqueadcentrum/pseuds/acaelousqueadcentrum, https://archiveofourown.org/users/czeegers/pseuds/czeegers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Issue 1 | Chapter 1 | Page 1.1/2 - "To This Moment"/"I Found You" | She's been riding for hours, the miles falling behind her like leaves in autumn. Still, there were always more ahead, always so many more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"To This Moment"/"I Found You" (Issue 1 | Chapter 1 | Page 1.1/2)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of Rookie Blue (and/or other imagery that may be used in the creation of this comic). No copyright infringement is intended.

She's been riding for hours, the miles falling behind her like leaves in autumn.

Still, there were always more ahead, always so many more.

She'd left Toronto two days ago, early in the morning. Filled the saddlebags of Nick's motorcycle with some clothes and a couple of boxes of ammo, whatever food she could scrounge out of her parents' fridge, and her dad's old service weapon. Hers, of course, was strapped on the outside of her thigh, where she could reach it easily as she rode. Nick had given her a couple of last-minute pointers on how to handle his prized possession before zipping up her thick leather jacket for her and pulling the helmet down on her head, securing the chinstrap. "Bring her home safe," he'd called as she started up the vehicle.

She pulled out of the drive without looking back, unsure if he was talking about his bike or her girl.

Didn't matter, Gail thought to herself as she leaned into a turn, the wind in her ears and a map of her route burned into the backs of her eyes, if she didn't find Holly, she wasn't coming back at all.

~ * ~

For days, access to the web had been blinking on and off. But she'd managed to get on a few days ago, just long enough to compare the flickering Google map to the one in her dad's old AAA atlas. By all accounts, it should only have taken her eight or nine hours to get from Toronto to Indiana, taking breaks and top-ups into account.

But those maps didn't take things like the fucking living dead into account, or roving hordes of terrified people, or the surge in professional highwaymen roaming the roads looking for their next targets. It didn't plan a route that involved weaving to and fro around abandoned cars on the freeway, or pulling off onto dirt access roads when the debris and decaying congestion on the highway got to be too much.  It didn't take into consideration hiding in the burnt-out shell of an old barn when she'd heard the sound of ATVs approaching, and the angry, rowdy voices of belonging to the kind of men who thrived in this sort of chaos, the collapse of a society into broken, fractured pieces.

Yes, she'd been prepared for a long journey. She'd been prepared for her ass to ache and her feet to go numb from the rhythm of the road. She'd been prepared to wipe bugs off her teeth, for the weight of the helmet on her head. She'd been prepared for the sound of wind to fill her ears until she was certain it would never leave, for the loneliness and the exhaustion.

She hadn't prepared for the fear.

The fear of not making it, of not finding Holly, of never seeing the woman she loved again.

The zombies? The fucking walking dead?

That was nothing.

Nothing a bullet to the brain couldn't fix.

What really terrified Gail was the thought that she'd be too late.

What really terrified Gail was the thought that a grainy web cam image was the last picture she’d have in her head of Holly, that the last thing she’d ever see the love of her life say was “I love—“ before getting cut off.

That she’d be waiting the rest of her life, however short or long it might be, to hear that final word.

So she’d find Holly, she would.

She’d move heaven and earth and hell itself to do it. She’d find Holly and she’d bring her back, and then the three of them—her, Holly, and Sophie—would find some bolt-hole, some paradise untouched by all this madness, and there they’d do more than just survive.

They’d live.

But first, first she had to find her.

~ * ~

It’s afternoon when she finally crosses into Indiana, and Gail figures that if she pushes it, she’s got enough gas and light to make it into Gary by the time it gets too dark. With the power grid unreliable at best, traveling at night has become complicated. Gail’d found that out for herself just the night before, and Nick’s bike had a couple of brand new scratches as a result.

More than a couple, really.

Besides, the rumble of the cycle and the lights just attracted trouble. Both kinds. Living and dead.

And while the dead were scary enough, it was the living she’d really prefer to avoid. The men and women who had slipped so seamlessly from that earlier, saner world into this dark chaotic one.  

And not even the packs of them, the gangs, but the loners. The ones who traveled all by themselves, those were really the ones you had to watch out for. The crazy fuckers who watched as the world burned down around them and figured they could go it on their own.  In times of crisis people banded together, everybody knew that. Hollywood had built an empire on that very human truth, had demonstrated time and time again how society survived on the backs of human relationships, and reaped in the profits.  The bad guys were always the ones on their own.

Of course, Gail thinks with a laugh as she swerves around an abandoned school bus laying across the road, what does that say about her?

Hard as she tries, though, she can’t outrun the sunset, and it’s dusk by the time she starts seeing the signs for Gary. Still, it makes her smile, and it makes her think of Sophie.  In the last weeks and days before Elaine got Soph settled out in the countryside, they’d spent their evenings huddled in the windowless basement of the Peck homestead. They’d all begun sleeping down there, except for whoever was on watch at the time, around the time the riots and lootings started.  Bill and Steve had dragged mattresses and rugs and blankets down, and somehow Tracy and Leo and Sophie had turned it into an almost cozy little campground, hanging drawings up on the wall, and using blankets to curtain off individual areas.

On nights when she wasn’t working—trying to keep some sense of order in her falling city-- or standing guard in the dark upstairs with her father’s shotgun, Gail would curl up on one of the mattresses with her daughter, and they’d watch old VHS tapes on her dusty high school TV/VCR.   Gail’s old Disney movies from when she was a kid, or her parent’s collection of assorted genres, usually. Movies that wouldn’t scare the Leo and Sophie any more than they already were.

But it was the last movie they’d watched that stuck in Gail’s head, the night before she’d bundled Sophie into one of the department’s UC cars with Leo, and sent her little girl off to somewhere that was hopefully safer than the city. She’d cried, and Traci’d wept, but only until the back of the car had faded from view. And then they’d pushed their worries out of their minds and gotten back to work.

Still, that whole day, and every day since, it had stuck with her, the movie. Sophie had picked it out, The Music Man. She liked movies with music in them, and they’d spent more than a few nights singing along together to movies like The Little Mermaid, or Sleeping Beauty, or Gail’s personal favorite, Beauty & the Beast.  But she’d wanted something new, and found the old classic musical at the bottom of the box of tapes.  Sophie had loved it, the colors and the music, the big brass of the band. She’d loved the whole thing.  

Gail had loved watching her as she watched, loved the way the girl’s eyes went wide and happy, and for a moment lost their worried look. The sound of Sophie’s laughter had carried her through every long day and lonely night since. The way her daughter had laughed at “Marian the Librarian,” and changed the lyrics. By the end of the night, Leo and Sophie and Steve, even Traci and Elaine, were all singing along to “Holly the Librarian” instead.

She can hear them now, singing merrily along to the movie.  First to “Gary, Indiana,” and then their mangled version of “Marian.” And she starts to sing along to the voices in her head, just to keep herself company, to keep herself awake as the mile markers count down to her destination.

And then it starts to rain, first a fine mist and then big fat drops of water that slide down the front of her helmet and onto her face.

And Gail sings louder.

~ * ~

It’s over before she even registers that it’s happening.

One second she’s racing along the final stretch of freeway before hitting the main part of the city, and the next, the next she’s spinning, spinning, spinning as the wheels of the bike slip on the wet gravel along the shoulder of the road.

She’s thrown from the bike and slides along the concrete, bits of glass and rock shredding through the thick denim of her jeans and embedding themselves into her skin. She might pass out for a few minutes, or maybe that darkness she sees above her is just the blackness of the night sky.

It takes a minute before she can sit up, and so for a moment or two she just lays there on the ground trying to catch her breath, trying to figure out what had just happened.  And then, when she’s caught her breath again, she starts to move. The pains make themselves immediately known--the road burn on her legs, the hollow ache in her shoulder and back from when she hit the ground, the slight throbbing of her head inside her helmet.  But somehow, nothing’s broken. somehow everything still works.  

Gail stands and pulls off the helmet, throwing it to the side when she sees the large crack along the side. The bike is still a few feet behind her, laying on its side, but she can see in the dim light of the quickly dying sun that it’s not okay.

No, it’s not okay at all. Some line must have snapped or gotten caught up in the debris on the road, because it’s leaking fluid all over the ground. There’s no way she can ride it now.

“Fuck!” she shouts into the brisk night sky, the exhaustion and fear and frustration finally getting to her, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Nick’s going to kill her. He’d saved up for this motorcycle for years. It was his pride and joy. As long as she’d known him he’d dreamed of owning a bike like this. It was all he could talk about sometimes when they dated the first time.  By the time he’d abandoned her at the altar in Nevada, Gail had known more about the inner workings of a motorcycle engine than she ever wanted to, and that was just from listening to him talk about it. Once he’d actually gotten the thing? Every weekend he didn’t work he washed and polished the smooth black and chrome metal of the machine. The second time they’d tried dating, before she’d been kidnapped and he’d gone undercover without a word for six months, she’d accused him of spending more time under his bike than she did under him.

That got her a sigh and an eye roll, and a patronizing “Gail--” to boot, but it was true. He’d loved the bike more than he ever loved her.

Maybe more than he’d ever loved anything.

And in a way, Gail had understood--did understand. Bounced around in foster care and group homes for most of his teenage years, no family to call his own, the bike was something that couldn’t leave him, something he could use to leave.

He’d lent it to her warily, handing over the key as if he knew he might never see it again.

And maybe he won’t. Because she has no idea how to fix it.

“Fuck,” Gail shouts again, and kicks at the machine. But that only serves to remind her about the injury on her leg.  She can feel the cool night air on her torn skin, and the way the blood has soaked up into the shredded material of her jeans.  In the light of Nick’s bike, she looks at the wounds--some cuts, but mostly just scrapes. She was lucky, Gail knows. It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse, she hears Holly say.

She’s pouring the last of her precious bottled water over the red skin, trying to clear away the debris--something else the Holly in her head told her to do--when she hears it. That shuffling, dragging sound. The strangled moan.

Gail reaches for her gun, thankful that the only damage from her accident was a bit of deep scarring along the thick leather holster.  She crouches behind the bike, using the overturned bus behind her as cover. If she’s really lucky, it’ll pass right by her.

But Gail knows that won’t happen. The thing--

The government’s been calling them “Unidentified Infected Persons,” or “UIPs” for short.  Gail can remember the first time Swarek heard the term. “Sounds like a fucking dog, man,” he’d complained, “yip-yapping at your ankles. Not a fucking nightmare that’s going to eat your face off.”  The nickname had stuck, and now most people were calling them Yips. But Gail agreed with Swarek, it sounded ridiculous.  By now she’s got a variety of names for these creatures, and none of them nice.

\--the limping, groaning, dead thing probably heard her yell, or saw the steady glare of the downed motorcycle. Fuckers were like moths that way, always hunting out the lone light in the darkness.

She watches at it comes closer and closer.

Just one this time.  Must have gotten separated from his herd.  The creature lumbers forward, and Gail holsters her gun. One on one she can handle. It’s when they swarm you, when you’re outnumbered that’s the real danger.  

There’s a hunting knife hidden in the sheath of her boot, sharp and fierce-looking, and Gail reaches for it. It there are more of these dead heads out there, she doesn’t want to attract them to her with a gunshot. Or any humans either, for that matter. If she can take care of this thing quickly and quietly, then she can figure out what she’s going to do next.

She waits, silently, silently. Waits until the thing is just past her position, with its back to her.

And then she lunges.  

She’s been trained, they all were.  She and the rest of the police officers in the division had had countless drills with dummies and each other. Gotta get the brain, they were told. Smash it, shoot it, sever it. That’s the only thing that’ll take these things down and keep them that way.

By now she’s taken down more than a few of the Yips, and it gets easier and easier every time. To forget that once they’d been like her, human. Alive. Now they were just rotten pieces of flesh, resembling the human race only the slightest. Stomachs on legs.

Maybe it should worry her a bit, how easy it had been to disassociate from them, how easy it was to think of them as targets or pests. Bugs to be stepped on. But it didn’t. She’d kill every one of the disgusting meat bags if it would get her to Holly, if it would keep Holly and Sophie safe.

She leaps up onto the thing’s back and it staggers under her weight, letting out a howl that seems half-canine, half-human. In a second she’s sinking the blade of her knife into the tender spot at the base of the skull, thrusting it up and in, destroying that delicate junction where brain meets spinal cord.  She struggles for a moment, trying to force the sharp edge of the knife in past flesh and muscle and bone--this dude must be pretty new, he’s not as decomposed as some she’s encountered--but after a moment or two she feels the body under her go slack, like a puppet that’s lost its master.

Gail tumbles down to the ground with the thing that used to be a man, used to be someone’s son, maybe someone’s husband or lover. She watches as the last of the electric impulses fade away, and after its limbs stop jerking she reaches down into the back pocket of the thing’s dirty, disgusting jeans for the wallet she can see outlined there.  

The money and credit cards she puts back--she’s no thief--but the Indiana driver’s license she keeps, sparing a glance at the name, and slips it into the inner pocket of her jacket, right next to the pictures of Holly and Sophie that she’s brought along, and the other licenses she’s picked up along the way.

She can hear insects in the nearby grass, and maybe water dripping somewhere, but no footsteps, no movement. It seems that Mr. Pike was all alone in the end after all. But at least she can clean off her knife and move on.

Indianapolis is calling.

A bed and a shower and a meal are calling.

But mostly, mostly it’s just Holly.  The thought and hope and dream of being reunited with her again. That’s what’s really pulling her forward, keeping her going.  

Just Holly.

Gail dusts herself off before she picks up the bike and gives it a roll, pleased to see that at the very least she can walk it the rest of the way.

She spares one last look at the body behind her, now covered up with the jacket she’d stripped off of it.

“Rest in peace my ass,” she says as she starts down the highway once again, toward the flickering of lights in the distance.

She’s almost there.

She can feel it.

~ * ~

Gail’s arms ache, her legs are throbbing, and she would kill for a drink of water.

But she’s so close.

She’d skidded out just about three miles outside of Gary, or so the sign she’d passed shortly after she started walking said.  And the one after that, that one said she had three-fourths more to go until she hit the city limits.

It’s nearing dawn now, and she’s been walking for what feels like forever. She’s passing through the outer areas now, heading toward the downtown area where she figures people will have congregated. Along the road she sees signs of chaos everywhere--a charred building, a garage with a big red “X” spray-painted along the side, possessions tossed aside without a thought.  And up ahead, up ahead there seems to be some sort of pile-up. Semis and buses and other vehicles all in a big tangle, blocking the road.

It takes Gail a minute or two to realize what she’s seeing--she’s blaming the exhaustion and the dehydration.  They’ve created a blockade, piling junk across the span of the freeway to make getting in, or out, a bit of a hassle.

She wonders if they’ve got--

A bright light hits her face,  causing her to stop where she stands. Yep, they’ve got guards too.

“Stop,” she hears from a megaphone off in the distance, “stop where you are. And put your hands up.”  A car pulls away from the blockade and approaches her.

“Put your hands up,” the voice on the megaphone shouts again.

Fuck it, Gail thinks to herself, can’t do much more damage that I’ve already done.

She drops the bike and puts her hands above her head.

~ * ~

It takes a couple of hours to get everything sorted out. A couple of hours and two satellite calls to Toronto. But eventually, the police officers who took custody of Gail at the blockade released her hands and returned her bags and weapons and badge.

“Sorry about that,” said the young man with a few scant strawberry hairs ghosting over his lip as he undid the zip tie binding Gail’s hands, “but we can’t take chances.”

A couple of months ago Gail would have been furious, would have responded in an icy tone with words designed to bite and wound. She would have cut this pubescent boy down to pieces and walked away without looking back.

But that was before.

Now she just shrugs and accepts her things back with a nod. She’s seen terrible things, seen people do terrible things, things she never could have imagined even during the worst of times in the Before. She knows how important it is to be careful about who you trust, who you bring into your community.

A lone individual, two guns, ammo, and a pretty wicked-looking knife? Torn and bloody clothing? Gail would have done the same thing.

“I get it,” she says, pulling out a spare pair of pants from one of the bags, “you gotta be careful. Hey, is there some place I could change?”

The officer--Gail didn’t bother to catch his name--motioned for her to follow and leads her to the door of a locker room.  Inside, Gail’s honestly a little comforted by the familiar setting. Police locker rooms seem to look the same everywhere. She changes quickly, hissing as she eases her pants down over her hips, and taking note of the scrapes and bruises as she does. There was a medic at the blockade who’d done what he could to the scrapes on her legs, slathering them in antibiotic cream and wrapping gauze around them, even spared a Tylenol for the pain, but in the hours since then the effects had worn off.  Gail pulls the belt tight and fastens it, she’s lost weight in the past few months. Too much work and too little sleep.

She wonders what Holly will say when she finds her.

The hallway is empty when Gail comes out, her guide nowhere to be seen. It’s for the best, she thinks to herself, rolling her eyes, he probably had to go take a geometry test or something.  

She shoulders her bag and heads back to the center of the station, intent on asking where they dumped her bike. But as she walks down the wide hallway toward the squad room, she sees a flash of dark, flowing hair, of long legs in dark blue jeans.

For a moment, she can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but feel herself transported back to another police station, another hallway, another crisis.  She sees Holly walking toward her, all tall and lithe, the gentle sway of her hips and the soft concern in her eyes.  But now she knows the danger Holly is in, now she knows everything that could have been lost that day. Everything that she could lose now.  

Past and present blend together into one terrifying image. There’s a madman out there, there are madmen everywhere, there are men who aren’t even men anymore. Gail feels her pulse pick up, and she struggles to breathe, struggles to pull air in through the tightness in her chest.  And she knows what’s happening, it’s not the first panic attack she’s had. Not the first since Perik, not the first since Ford, not even the first since everything went to shit and dead people started walking around trying to chew on people.  Panic and fear have become her familiar bedfellows now, and normally she can head them off at the pass when they try to break out of the boxes she’s buried them in.  But right now she can’t stop it, she can’t pull herself back into reality and stop the emotions coursing through her mind and body. Right now she’s lost to them.

“Hey, hey--blondie,” she hears over the roar in her ears, “calm the fuck down before you knock yourself out.”

Gail looks up, and it’s Holly but it’s not Holly. The hair is similar, the skin tone maybe. But Holly’s eyes are darker, softer, and she has a mole, but no freckles. This woman’s mouth, it’s all wrong. Holly has this perfect, crooked mouth, and this perfect, crooked smile. And seeing it, seeing that thing she does with her lips, the way she bites at them when she’s feeling nervous, or when she’s feeling impatient, seeing it was always Gail’s favorite part of the day when they were together. But this woman, this woman isn’t Holly.

Strangely, strangely that makes Gail feel better. She can feel herself start to breathe again, feel the tension and the fear start to release their hold on her.

After a few minutes, she stands up, honestly not sure how she ended up on the floor.

“You okay there,” the woman who is not Holly asks, and Gail recognizes the feel of fingers at her wrist as someone taking her pulse.

“What,” Gail responds, blinking away her confusion.

The woman looks at her, up and down. “You’re the woman they brought in from the barricade this morning, aren’t you? The police officer from Canada, right?”

Gail nods her head, still a little shaky on her feet.

Not-Holly takes her by the arm and starts walking her down the hallway. “When’s the last time you ate anything,” the dark-haired woman asks, “or got any sleep.”

When Gail doesn’t answer, the woman sighs. “Let’s go fix you up, Canada. You’re starting to look like those walking bodybags out there.”

~ * ~

“So,” asked the woman who had introduced herself as Johanna--call me Jo--McGuire, “you said you were looking for someone?”  The detective put down a steaming cup of tea and a second sandwich on the table in front of Gail before taking a seat across from her.

“My girlfriend. Holly. Holly Stewart,” Gail answers, feeling the tea’s warmth spreading through her body. Panic attacks always leave her cold afterward, cold and shivering.  “She’s a doctor. A pathologist, actually, so, you know, she’s kind of out of a job right now. She’s heading for Toronto and I’m trying to find her.”  

“Wait, if she’s heading to Toronto,” McGuire says slowly, “and you were in Toronto, why not just wait for her to get there? Why come looking? What if you can’t find her? Or you passed her along the way?”

This isn’t the first time Gail’s heard these questions. She’s lost track of how many times her parents and friends had argued with her about her plan.

The only one, actually, who hadn’t thought she’d lost her mind was Oliver. He’d pulled her aside the morning before she planned to leave and wrapped her up tight in a warm, fatherly hug. “Peck,” he’d said, “maybe what everybody says is true. Maybe you’re crazy for trying this. But I get it, I do. If it were Izzy or Celery? Hell, even it if were Zoe, I’d be doing the same thing.  Our girls? They’re our lives. We’d be nothing without them. So I get it. But you listen to me, Little Peck, you come home. You get your girl and you come home. I don’t care what you have to do, you come back to us. You hear me?”

She’d heard.  She’d looked him in the eye and nodded. She would do whatever it took, whatever it took to find Holly and get them both back in one piece.  And she’d hugged him tight, this surrogate father of hers. She’d hugged him tight and buried her nose into the corner of his neck, memorizing the scent of him, the feel of him. She’d come home, she’d make him proud.

“Hey,” he’d said as she turned to leave, bag full of supplies she’d appropriated from the division armory, “take this.”

It was a knife, big and fierce-looking with its serrated edge.

“Guns are good, but this might come in handy too. Just,” he said as he placed the weapon in her hands, “just bring that back too, okay? It’s a bit of a keepsake, that’s all.”

She must’ve looked confused, because he’d reached down to turn the blade over.  There, Gail saw, engraved into the shiny steel was a message: Congrats, Papa Bear.

“Jerry,” she’d said in a pained whisper, the ache in her gut already certain of what his answer would be.

Oliver had just looked at her with sad eyes.  “Yeah,” he said, “when Izzy was born. Said it’d come in handy when the boys started knocking at our door.”

Gail felt the weight on her shoulders double, triple in size as she looked at her boss, her mentor, her friend.

“Just come back safe, Gail,” he said one last time. “We’ve lost too many people, too many. I can’t lose another, okay?”

He was the only one who had any faith in her, really. The only one who understood why she had to go.

So no, the questions aren’t new to her.

But honestly, Gail’s just tired of trying to answer them, trying to make other people understand.

There are a million ways she could answer. She could tell the officer the whole story, their beginning back in Toronto, their abrupt end. She could tell the other woman how they’d put everything on pause, how they were in love but not together, how Holly was her forever but circumstances had forced them apart for the time being. She could tell Jo how scared she’s been, how terrified that something will happen to the woman who means everything to her, how she’ll be too late, how every night she as she struggles to sleep she sees Holly’s face. Not the Holly she’d laughed with at the batting cages. Not the Holly she’d kissed at the precinct, or the one who’d held her so close and tight at night.

The scared Holly, the worried Holly, the fuzzy frozen image of Holly, half a world away, just before their connection cut out for the last time.

That’s the image that haunts her dreams.

But Gail doesn’t tell Jo any of these things.

Instead, she looks the other officer straight in the eye, wondering how she could have ever seen her lover in this woman.

“Because I love her,” Gail says, “because I need her.”

In the end, it’s as simple as that.

McGuire looks impressed. “You must love her a lot,” she says.

“I do,” she answers.

Jo nods, picking at a gash in the table, “So, how are you going to find her. What’s your plan?”  

Gail swallows a bite of her sandwich and starts to talk.

“Last I heard from her, she was planning on heading home on the I-70. She figured it’d be the simplest route.  I lost contact with her a couple of weeks ago, but last week we got a hit on a feeler from the PD in St. Louis. They processed a Holly Stewart in and out of the city, said she mentioned Indianapolis, Gary, heading up toward Detroit to avoid the mess on the east coast. I figured I’d start here--there’s no way she could have made it past the Indiana border already--and hopefully meet up with her somewhere along the way.”

The dark-haired detective nods as she sips at her tea.

“We keep a record of who comes in and out of the city too--figure if any of us survive this, it’ll be the only way to track down missing loved ones, check-point to check-point. Once you’re done eating, I’ll run you over to the records office and we’ll look for your girl.”

Shoving the other half of her sandwich into her mouth, Gail stands up.  “I’m ready, let’s go,” she says. And though the words are muffled, her meaning is clear.

Jo shakes her head. “This girl of yours, Canada, she must be something.”

“She is,” Gail answers, “and it’s Peck. Let’s go.”

~ * ~

She’s in Gary.

Holly is in Gary.  Somewhere.

Her name is right there on the list--Holly Anne Stewart, 33, of San Francisco, via-Indianapolis.

The date on the ledger says she arrived yesterday.

She’s here. She’s alive.

Gail lets out a breath she’s been holding for days. For weeks. Since the last time she heard Holly’s voice.

Maybe since the last time she held Holly in her arms, all those months ago at the airport in Toronto. The day that Holly left for San Francisco and Gail put her heart on hold.

“Alright, she’s in town, Peck. What do you want to do now?” Jo asks from the chair in the corner, her feet propped up on the desk in front of her.

Gail looks over at her and rolls her eyes.

“Now, Barney Fife,” she says, “I’m going to find her.”

Jo throws her head back and laughs. And when her laughter starts to calm, the old man in charge of the book today speaks up.

“Miss, while you’re here--” he says, holding out a pen.

She has to write with tiny, tiny letters, not her usual looping, free style, but she manages. And when she stands up, there is a new entry squeezed right under Holly’s.

Stewart, Holly Anne. 33. Of San Francisco Toronto, via-Indianapolis. [11 April 2015]

And underneath, in a messy scribble:

Peck, Gail Esme. 30. Of Toronto, via-Hell. [12 April 2015]

“Hey,” she says, a thought occurring to her, “do you keep track of the dead too?”  

When the old man nods, she reaches into the inner pocket of her jacket and pulls out the stack of licenses she’s kept safe during her journey.

“These aren’t all of them,” Gail says to him, unable to meet his eyes, “but they’re the ones I could find on the bodies after.  It isn’t much but … but they deserved better than they got. Nobody should have to die--should have to live--should have to exist like that.”

She bows her head, almost penitent.  Maybe she’d become a police officer because it had been expected of her, but she’d stayed one because there was something noble in the job. Because she really did want to protect people, to keep the weak and vulnerable safe from those who would do them harm. Like she’d been harmed.  And now she’s got a body count. Now she’s taken lives. And sure, maybe the YIPs didn’t have much of a life, but the people they once were? Deserved better endings than they’d gotten.

In some ways, it’s why she’s kept the IDs when she could find them. On the one hand, so that she could track down their kin when life settled down again--if life settled down again. On the other, so she would never forget.

She doesn’t regret what she’s done, no. She’d killed in self-defense and in mercy. She has no regrets. Instead, Gail has names now. Names she’ll carry with her, names that she’s engraved onto her conscience, her soul.

Now Gail watches as the names of her ghosts are inscribed in this modern day book of the dead, and she tries, as best as she can, to remember where each had spent their final moments. Maybe some day it would offer comfort to someone trying to fit together the pieces of how things had gone wrong, of what had happened to whomever they were missing.

“Do you want me to hold onto these,” the old man asks, but Gail shakes her head. They’re hers, her burden to carry. She’s glad the information is written down now, but these notifications are her responsibility. And she’ll carry them until she fulfills it, or can’t carry them any more.

“Hey,” McGuire says as Gail slips the plastic cards back into her pocket, “is that your girlfriend?”

The detective bends over to pick up the photograph that has fallen onto the floor as they walk toward the door. She looks at it for a moment, an odd look crossing over her face.

“Yes,” Gail answers, drawing the word out carefully as she took the photo back, “that’s Holly.”

Jo looks impressed. “She’s hot,” the detective says.  

The blonde can’t help but agree. “She is,” Gail answers, “and she’s mine.”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Jo says with a smirk, “I may swing both ways but I absolutely do not mess around with people in relationships.  Or threesomes. I don’t do threesomes either.”

The blonde laughed as she stepped into the bright sun of the midwestern afternoon.

“Hey,” Jo said, “can I see that photo again?”

Gail scrunched her face up. “What, so you can stare at her some more,” she asked as the other woman stopped in the shade under an abandoned storefront.

“No, it’s just, I think I’ve seen her. The more I think about it, the more I think I have.”

Jo starts walking back toward where they came from, and Gail jogs to catch up.

“Wait, you’ve seen Holly,” she asks.

“I was at the high school this morning, we’ve set up a triage center there. Injured, refugees, you know. Cots and terrible cafeteria food. You said she’s a doctor, right? I’m pretty sure I saw her there helping out.”

~ * ~

The school is a disaster area. There are people everywhere, and Gail reaches instinctively for the baton that isn’t on her belt right now.

“Hey, doc,” Jo shouts to a heavy-set man in the corner of the large gymnasium, “you got a minute?”

He pushes his way through the crowd and over to where Gail and the other woman stand.

“Detective, I didn’t expect to see you here again so soon.  I haven’t heard any reports of more fights, so what can I do for you?”

He looks tired, Gail thinks, like he’s been counting sleep in minutes and not hours. She knows the feeling well.

“We’re looking for someone, I think she was here this morning helping out?” Jo holds out Gail’s picture of Holly.

The doctor takes it, and Gail fists her hands, struggling against the desire to take it back.  

“Holly, right,” he asks. “She left not too long ago. Said she’d be back later if she could.”

“How long ago,” Gail says desperately, slipping the photo back into her pocket, “do you know where she’s going?”

The doctor looks back and forth between the two police officers, unsure of whether he should say anything.

“Girlfriend,” Jo said with a nod in Gail’s direction. “This one came all the way from Toronto to bring her back home safe. If this weren’t a disaster flick come to life, it’d be almost romantic,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He nodded, and then looked at Gail. “About ten minutes ago, something about meeting someone at the armory. I gave her directions on how to get there.”

He repeats them for Gail, who commits them to memory, saying a silent prayer of thanks to Elaine in her head, before turning and running out of the gym toward the street.

“Hey, Canada,” she hears McGuire call from behind her, “what the hell?”

She doesn’t stop.

“Okay then,” McGuire yells, “I guess I’ll see you around.”

Gail just keeps running.

She’s so close.

~ * ~

There are people on the street, but Gail ignores them. She ignores everything that isn’t a tall, slim brunette.  Everyone that doesn’t swing their hips just right as they walk, the way Holly does.

Too tall, too young, redhead, man.  She checks off categories in her head as she jogs up Broadway, following the route the doctor told her he gave Holly.

And then, up ahead, a flash of brown hair. The bob of a head, a gait that’s almost a hop, the way Holly walks when she’s determined, when she’s focused and not really paying attention.

“Holly,” Gail shouts, “Holly!”

But Holly doesn’t turn around.

Gail tries again, stopping she she can gather her breath to shout.

“Lunchbox,” she yells into the wind.

And there, the head stops. Stops and turns.

It’s Holly.  It’s her Holly.

Gail feels like she could weep.

It’s her.

She can’t move any further. She’s come all this way. Come after her girl. She’s fought and fled and struggled and killed to get to this point. To this moment.

She’s survived.

All for the opportunity to see this woman one more time, to bring her home.

And now she can’t move.

But it doesn’t matter.

Now Holly’s coming after her.

Now Holly’s doing what she does best, she’s bridging the gap. She’s building the bridge.

She’s making Gail whole again.

That’s what it feels like.

Like being made whole.

Holly wraps her up into a hug, almost lifting her off the ground in her happy eagerness.  They kiss softly, oblivious to their surroundings, kiss and kiss and kiss until Holly breaks the seal of their lips and pulls her head back, taking Gail’s face into her hands.

“What are you doing here,” the brunette says, “why aren’t you at home? Where’s Sophie? Gail, what happened to Sophie?”

Holly’s rambling, and as tired and road-weary and just soul-heavy as Gail’s feeling right now, she’s just so happy.

“Shhh,” she says, and leans forward, stopping her girlfriend’s mouth with another kiss, this one delicate and chaste. “You just had to stop talking,” Gail whispers with a grin.

The look on Holly’s face is beautiful, and for a moment the doctor looks light again, like nothing had ever happened to them. “I won’t say another word,” she answers, her smile soft and sweet.  And Gail knows then that nothing has changed between them. That time and distance and fucking zombies haven’t banked the heat of their love for one another, their desire.

“Hey,” Gail says, noticing the bruising on the side of Holly’s face, some scratches under her chin and running down her neck, “what happened here?” She gently turns Holly’s to get a better look at the wound, tracing her fingers over the marks there.

“Later,” Holly says, “we have time for all that later. Why are you here--”

But the blonde kisses the woman she loves again, deeply this time, and carefully.

“Gail,” Holly says as she breaks their kiss again, exasperation clear in her tone, “what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Toronto?”

The blonde reaches a hand up to brush a few strands of hair out of Holly’s eyes, to cup her palms around Holly’s jaw, as if she were holding something beyond delicate, beyond precious.

“I came to find you,” she said, “I told you I’d find you.”

Holly sighs softly at that, sighs and then rolls her eyes. But Gail knows what the brunette is saying.

She breathes in a sigh of relief herself.

She’s done it. She’s found Holly. She’s found the woman she loves.

She has no idea what the future has in store for them, what the world is becoming, but it doesn’t matter. She’s got Holly, they’re going to get Sophie.

Whatever happens in the meantime?

They’ll deal with it together.

 

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